Friday, September 04, 2009

I have a dell laptop that had become extremely slow. I was looking at the options of cleaning the resgistry, cleaning up temporary internet files and all other available suggestions on internet. However, this did not help much. My laptop became almost unusable!! My desperate searches in the internet led me to find something like "While booting your system hold your control and f10 key" or "While booting your system hold your control and f11 key" or "While booting your system hold your control and f12 key" to get to setup option. I tried with F10, but it did not work, so I left the rest of the options.

The best way to look for the right combination of keys is to get hold of your DELL manual that comes along with your installation. It is sometimes also called "Owners manual". Once you got hold of it look for the "solving problem" -> "Restoring your operating system" section. Inside this section, you will find specific instructions as to how to get back to your factory default mode. For example mine says the following:

To use PC Restore:1 Turn on the computer.During the boot process, a blue bar with www.dell.com appears at the top of the screen.2 Immediately upon seeing the blue bar, press < Ctrl >< F11 >.If you do not press < Ctrl >< F11 > in time, let the computer finish starting, and then restartthe computer again.NOTICE: If you do not want to proceed with PC Restore, click Reboot in the following step.3 On the next screen that appears, click Restore.4 On the next screen, click Confirm.The restore process takes approximately 6–10 minutes to complete.5 When prompted, click Finish to reboot the computer.NOTE: Do not manually shut down the computer. Click Finish and let the computer completelyreboot.6 When prompted, click Yes.The computer restarts. Because the computer is restored to its original operating state, thescreens that appear, such as the End User License Agreement, are the same ones thatappeared the first time the computer was turned on.7 Click Next.The System Restore screen appears and the computer restarts.8 After the computer restarts, click OK.

And needless to mention this worked like charm!! I got the desirable result. My computer works like new!! Only trouble is, you would have lost all your data and any new installations. But I don't think this is a big price to pay for this great change in performance. Installing softwares as you need and backing up data is something does not take a lot of effort.. So happy restoring your system.